Roberts Street

I sit with Chris and Ray at the White Horse drinking lemon, lime and bitters and relay the things I know about people in my street. They are amazed at the volume of detailed information I’m able to collect from the comfort of my own bed.

Hazel from number 53 is dying. She is in hospital. I know this because as I lie in bed on Saturday morning I hear her daughter on the phone: “she’s dying, she’s dying, she’s dying. How dare you ask me to check how much the other houses in this street are rented out for. She’s dying.”

Number 47 is being harassed by a man on the phone. She picks up the phone, yells “this is harassment” and hangs up. The phone rings. She picks it up, yells “this is harassment” and hangs up. And so it continues. Two weeks ago it went like that till 3 in the morning. The Lorraine voice inside my head also tells me that number 47 doesn’t have proper curtains. Just a navy and white striped sheet tied up to the rail.

When I had the flu on a Friday afternoon, the gay couple from my side of the street pulled up outside the window. As the engine died: “I can’t take this anymore. I spoke to Glen today and he mentioned us having a silver bedspread. How does he know that? Answer me that. Just how does he know that?”

Later as I’m getting in my car to go get the smoked salmon I crave I hear a scuffle on the other side of their front door. One of them is crying and the other is repeating: “Get off me, get off me, get off me, get off me.”

Annie didn’t realise that the one with dreads is gay. She says that living in San Francisco impeded her judgment in that respect. Tara told me that one of them works at the Powerhouse and I had been meaning to say hi. Now I don’t think so.

This makes me sound like Mrs Crabberts from Bewitched. I’m not even really home very much. And this information seems to seek me out as I’m in my own home trying to sleep, clearly a sneaky and prying thing to do.

Based on all of the above I didn’t find it too difficult to believe the research released this week about people in the inner west being among the most unhappy in Sydney (Australia? or was it the world?). I had been thinking for some time that Roberts Street is particularly angst ridden, or there’s something intense about the alignment of the stars in Q1 2006, or at the other extreme, I lead a comparitively calm and drama-free life. I am an observer.

Last night between three and four a.m, a man lay snoring in the tiny verge of garden outside my window. I think he thought it was his house because he had tried to open the screen door with a key that didn’t work.

When I heard the key in the door I lay breathing fast wondering what was going to happen next. What happened next was that he lay his head down on the seaside daisies outside my window, went to sleep and snored. It wasn’t continuous snoring. At one point he coughed and I thought he might be vomiting, but then he just settled back into a heavy breathing rhythm.

Our neighbour came home with a friend, said farewells on the footpath and went inside her house. Snoring boy kept on snoring. At first I was annoyed thinking that if I’d wanted to be kept awake by a snoring man I could have gone out and picked up. But then I dozed and when I woke I couldn’t hear him breathing any more. What if the vigour of his snoring had prompted him to inhale a sea-side daisy and he had choked? What if he lay dead outside my window? I began to panic. But then…snoring. Relief.

I did wonder, though, how it might end. Would I just open the front door in the morning, say g’day and step over him on my way to breakfast? Would he still be snoring? Would it turn out to be someone I knew?

Just then he started to talk which was helpful in discounting one possibility. I didn’t recognise his voice. I thought he said bitch, bitch, bitch but it could have been itch, itch, itch or even big itch, big itch, big itch because he started scratching at the same time. Soon after, I heard him shuffling around and he might have said: gotta go, see ya which made me wonder if he wasn’t alone. He must have walked away down the street but I didn’t hear his footsteps.

At 4.15am Hazel’s daughter was on the street talking to a cab driver: “we ordered this cab for 4.30 and my daughter is still in the shower, can you come back at 4.30?” At 4.30: “she’s going to the airport and we’re a bit short of money so can you take her the shortest way?” Then she’s saying goodbye and crying.

Hazel, dressed in a house frock, used to walk her dogs up and down the street, partly for the dogs’ sake and partly in the hope of meeting someone to talk to. After Gina and I were caught a few times we once pretended we were jogging so that we had an excuse not to stop.

This morning I read a few more Carver short stories in preparation for book club, played Nancy Sinatra and Nebraska and wondered how a night spent sober could feel so unreal.

It was real. His shoes are there still, on the front step. And socks. The shoes are worn down and have holes in the back. He leans to the outside as he walks, that snoring boy.